Meaning is meaningful. It’s what we all search for, often relentlessly in all that we do. Are we looking for value in a valueless world? Do we want assurance of a purpose as conscious beings? Do we merely need to experience ourselves as part something, part of a greater significance or symbolism than the economic, political, and social systems that we manufacture and perpetuate in this search?
I was cleaning out my art studio the other day. As I was pulling off sticky-note after sticky-note of unrealised projects and halfed-up ideas, when it dawned on me that all of the sketches and scribblings had something in common. In all that ‘data’ there was some kind of meaning that could be attached to it. There was meaning in the message, a pattern emerged. (PAUSE). I realised that all of these projects seemed to be centered around or tangent to some form of singularity. Black holes, the ‘ice man’, amoebas, time capsules, chameleons…the list goes on. These were all images that popped into my head at some point of time while hanging out in the studio brainstorming new installations and art projects. As I restacked this pile of sticky-notes, it became increasingly evident. All of these projects were about something that was inspiring in its singularity. These forms, the ice man, a black hole are essentially anomalies, the differences that provide enough contrast or distance from subjective being to offer a glimpse of something sublime and perfect, something truly meaningful. Additionally, there is also something nearly magical about the these things, at least for me personally. Something non-descript, something that might be called beauty?
So how do these projects relate to me. This is the ad-infinitum question of the hour. Are they metonyms of my conscious existence? Do they signal a quest for absolute greatness, not dissimilar to a Holy Grail of consciousness?
Thinking about reasons for why I have this creative urge that assumes these singular anomalies, I began to think about myself as something singularly unique in my individuality. Not only in my form as matter, but also in my identity, my conscious being. So what exactly makes these other forms of singularities, and beyond that what gives them reason to be attractive? Why would I even care about this idea of a black hole? Well, I suppose behind the facade of its imagery, it reminds me of something, something personal, something inside me that I know. Perhaps something that I am, something that we all are.
These objects, forms, things are not solely attractive or of interest to me alone. For this reason alone I can only assume that due to the fact that others hold stock in the idea of a black hole, enough to construct the world’s largest particle accelerator in order to study it, the idea must hold some meaning; it must be important and of special consequence. So why I am I attracted to them?
Are they symbolic? I suppose another factor is that many of these singularities I have never actually seen, or witnessed with any acute sensibility. Therefore I am only aware of the black hole through representation of it in images, words, and stories. The other quality about the black hole is “Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can reveal its presence through interaction with other matter.”
It is here that we can observe something.
How does the concept of a black hole relate to me? I started to think about myself, if I were a black hole how would I feel? Black holes can never look in the mirror, so reflecting upon ones self isn’t possible. Black holes become ones self continuously. Black holes are because they are absorbing everything else, and only know to exist through their “interaction with other matter”.
(REWIND)… the amoeba is similar but in an opposite kind of way.
Back to meaning. From these perspectives…Can there be meaning in any one singular thing, if the singular thing is always becoming through everything surrounding it?
Perhaps meaning cannot exist within the singularity. There is no meaning in one single thing alone, as is matter in a black hole, but rather meaning is constructed by proximities and relationships. Furthermore, it is not simple a spatial or relational matter, but also a matter of agreement, communicated agreement. As artists we are continuously explore new and changing ways of communicating agreements.
Moving these ideas to the concept of value, this concept suggest that we are not valuable in our selves. As humans, as people, as artists. In fact art may as well have no value. According to Bourriaud (1998), contemporary art and its delivery can operate in many arenas as a “social interstice…a space in human relations which fits more or less harmoniously and openly in to the overall system, but suggests other trading possibilities other than those in effect within this system” (p.16). As Bourriaud describes, “It has been said of art, and Marx was the first, that it represents the ‘absolute merchandise’, because it is the actual image of the value” (p. 42). Art is immediately devoted to, and often created solely, for the worlds of exchange, communication, and commerce.
Just as art acquires an exchange value, people too can embody this value. We, as some-one, are nothing without someone else, or are we? We are conferred and confirmed through the awareness of another, through our differences and deviations. It is the through the connections between ‘some-ones’ that anything meaningful can even be considered, yet communicated.
Much of my past work as an artist has been near these ideas. In many ways I’ve been concerned with singularity. I’ve been concerned with examining myself in relation. Through the use of media as a vehicular mechanism of communication to communicate myself to myself at a singular point in time-space. In this way, I bend back upon myself. Like making a media-instant clone of myself that somehow got caught in a feedback loop before I could communicate something to myself.
I think of watching myself watch myself in a hall of mirrors. I am my audience.
One question that is begging an answer. Do I have anything meaningful to communicate to myself?
5 Comments
1 Hannah C. Osborne wrote:
I applaud your willingness and ability to self-reflect in a way that will propel your evolution, not only as an artist but as a human being. As a sociologist and social worker having spent the past two decades researching human development and evolution, I appreciate the creative urge toward seeking connection with our selves, with others, with the environment, and with the Divine. Your pondering leads you to a question which will, by its very asking, lead you toward further development and evolution. I would pose that the act of pondering meaningful self-communication is itself an expression of interaction rather than singularity. Art, which is “devoted to… communication” [sic], is mediated not only by the self, but by all else. Is not all communication mediated through the collective consciousness? Including self-communication? And, much as the black hole attracts all else in spatial proximity, we humans attract not only by spatial proximity, but as well by relationship, which we now understand on the quantum level via the concept of nonlocal connection. These are the common threads that create the fabric of consciousness.
An apt quote from the introduction by Gregg Braden in The Divine Matrix (pp. xiv-xv): “…the Divine Matrix works like a great cosmic screen that allows us to see the nonphysical energy of our emotions and beliefs… projected on the great screen of life….we’re like artists expressing our deepest passions, fears, dreams, and desires through the living essence of a mysterious quantum canvas….Within the Divine Matrix…the separation between art and artist disappears. We are the canvas, as well as the images upon it: we are the tools as well as the artist using them.”
Thank you for your contribution toward furthering the role of contemporary art as communicated agreement!
2 Nathan wrote:
Thanks for your contribution! You raise a very engaging point, that “we are the tools as well as the artists using them”. I’ll add that it is our various social, political, economic, historical, cultural, and material relationships that are the media, materials, and forms of this art that we work with as ‘inter-human art objects’.
Looking at the different forms of art that I’m involved with, ie. performance, interactivity, installation, sculpture, film/video, these medium or genre become the the means or technique by which we manipulate, negotiate, shape, act, and interact with those that choose to be a part of the art work.
I am interested in how definitions, practices, concepts, and forms of art are evolving at present. Considering concepts of identity, individuality, communication, and society, I’m searching for ways that at once I can better understand myself through my art, as well as locate my positions within these various concepts as they are contextualised through their cultural complements.
3 Hannah O. wrote:
The search to understand oneself is a lifelong pursuit, although not often recognized as an integral part of human development and evolution, and not often enough an intentional one. It seems that you have an awareness of your own pursuit and have chosen art as a vehicle to your understanding. As such, art as a vehicle, by its nature and unlike the exclusively written or vocalized word, includes others in the search for understanding in a uniquely illustrative and emotionally compelling manner. Art touches the range of senses in a singular experience that is at once an individual experience, as well as a means of connection, communication and relationship.
The search for meaning through art brings to mind the way that we, as humans, have come to understand and perceive the constellations in the night sky. We have perceived the heavens as on a flat plane, an illusion that comes from having but one vantage point from which to view them. In our collective mind’s eye we have made patterns in the stars and grouped them in constellations. We have assigned names, endowed them with animation, and created stories to give them meaning. In this metaphor, contemporary art, being multidimensional, as we now understand the heavens to be, gives us more positions from which to acquire understanding. The mysteries of heavenly bodies give us pause – we ponder their beauty and wonder at their existence, and our own; we search for meaning, collective and individual; and we can use our relationship to the heavens (or the arts) to locate our position.
Contemporary art expands not only our vantage point for perception and understanding, but also our ability to interact with art. This significant element in the evolution of art allows for understanding to be negotiated on many levels and in many dimensions. Your understanding and its artistic expression have the ability to amplify individual self-exploration for many.
4 DL wrote:
…de nada…
5 Djoko Supriyadi wrote:
Our Emerging Universe